Lev spent the night crafting. The suns shone brightly in the sky by the time he returned to his room, comparing the five final products. Each bracer did the same thing, and he was mainly looking at the runes carved smoothest.

Eventually, he chose one and stored the rest in his ring. So, with the bracer in hand, he knocked on the couple's room, finding Amelia already inside. She was seated on a chair, and the other two were sitting at the edge of their bed.

"You shouldn't spend entire nights on projects," the comment came from the healer, already keeping track of everyone's health. "Sleep is important."

Lev just waved to the other two. "These two will sleep even less than I after Master, you just watch."

"What does that have to do with anything?" she huffed, but dropped the topic when he handed her the bracer. "What is this?"

"Your equipment for when you reach the level cap. It's enchanted to allow you to summon three of my weakened barriers and control them freely. I added some hurdles to make that harder than it already was, which should amount to good progress for your Mana Barrier skill."

She ooh'd, absorbed in her intent observation. With her Perception, it was likely impossible to make out the runes. Instead, she put it on, and Lev used that moment to adjust it to her arm's width. He had left some spare material on the bottom to account for the change.

"Thank you," she almost bowed her head, hastily moving away from the barrier finger primed to flick her forehead. "Okay, I get it."

"Good," Lev nodded and looked at the other two. "Your equipment will be ready too by then. Are you guys ready for today's delve?"

"Of course," Amelia answered. "What about you?"

"Patrols, most likely," he shrugged. "There's little for me to do except help with waves. Maybe if I know for certain that a wave won't form anytime soon and you guys need a break, it should be possible to lead a platinum delve as a guardian."

"How does that work?" Jack asked, hearing about the delves for the first time.

"Exactly as you would imagine. A Master accompanies the Adept hunters and stays hidden, only aiding them to prevent deaths."

"Wouldn't that hurt their evolutions like it would for us?" Amelia asked with a small frown. "That doesn't sound great."

Lev agreed. "It does, but they still send guardians for a very good reason. What good would it be to risk losing potential Masters just to preserve a bit more of their evolution power? Better to have them be slightly weaker than to not have any."

"Does that really work?"

"Yep. I had the Runic Warlord accompany me in one of my earliest delves, and it still counted as solo because he didn't help me with anything."

****

The company found themselves staring at a dungeon's portal entrance. Lev was used to seeing larger and more imposing ones, though it was still a first time for his team.

"Well?" he broke them out of their stupor after five minutes of silence, grinning. "We're supposed to go in."

Jack coughed and hoisted up his unenchanted shield, about to take the lead. Lev took a few quick steps forward and entered first, his armor ready to be summoned into its active state.

Nothing attacked him. The dense forest they had entered was unnaturally silent, as was usual for the dungeon they had chosen. It was chosen to train their Perception and reflexes, harboring weak monsters that relied on ambushes.

Lev turned around to nod at his teammates and vanished. Now covered in active invisibility and mana concealment formations, he flew above the treeline and looked around. Spotting the mostly stationary monsters was a piece of cake, though he had to raise an eyebrow after finding the boss.

[Stalker Owl - Level 86]

[Brownbark Hound - Level 70]

[Windrider Falcon - Level 119]

That does not seem normal… he mused, not staring at the eagle for too long and risking detection. Though it's not exactly abnormal either. Bosses up to level 120 show up relatively often, only rarely above 115. Let's see how they deal with it.

A small planning session through the communication crystals followed. The messages were broadcast for Lev too, in case something went awry and they needed help.

This time, due to the nature of the dungeon, Kayla stayed behind, whereas Amelia stayed close to her. Jack stayed in front to absorb the attention and take it away from the two behind him.

Their plan also involved circling the edges of the dungeon at first. By avoiding the stronger monsters deeper inside, they wanted to first test the waters by facing the weaker ones. Quite a bit more cautious than Lev was during his first delve, immediately resorting to hunting spiders solo.

I don't doubt they will be the same, though, he thought to himself, amused. Especially when they realize just how easy each monster here is gonna be to deal with. They are all out in the open for Amelia to detect with her heat sense long before their ambush.

The delve was meant to serve as training wheels anyway. Lev didn't want to throw them into difficult situations from the very start.

"Something's up in the tree," Amelia voiced, pointing her sword in the direction of the monster. The words were meant for Jack and Kayla, and the latter immediately formed a Mana Barrier. It was considerably stronger than the first one she had formed during their first meeting. Regardless, it wouldn't survive more than a few hits from the monsters unless repaired rapidly, something she still wasn't used to doing.

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Her buffs enveloped the melee fighters just as an owl dove from the tree. Light green in color, its feathers blended with the leaves to a fascinating degree. Jack didn't care about that and bashed its charge with his shield.

Talons scratched the metal shield with grating screeches, the fleshy limb thoroughly losing the exchange. Not giving the downed monster a chance to get up, Kayla's barrier dropped down onto its bulk, too slow to do any damage but enough to keep it from getting up.

A concentrated firebolt from Amelia put a hole through the owl's small stature, and she hastily made it dissipate before it exploded. Her efforts were somewhat rewarded, as the weakened bolt only produced a small blast before it too vanished without starting a forest fire.

"Too loud still," Jack sent, eyes constantly scanning the skies and trees. "Let me deal the finishing blows in cases like this."

Amelia had no issues with that and moved slightly ahead, changing her strategy. Her role had become more active now, limited to her body enhancement and swordsmanship. That was more than enough in Lev's opinion.

Finding nothing for the next few minutes did nothing to make Jack relax or let his guard down, and his shield jerked to the side to block a snake's lunge. It evaded a hammer strike and dodged another shield bash, only for a barrier to deflect its next strike, right into a waiting sword that bisected it.

Knowing what to expect, the trio immediately moved away from the thrashing head that wasn't going to die for a while longer. Jack moved closer after it didn't spew any acid or venom, then pulped the head in a single move.

Since they had it under control, Lev brought his bubble closer and jumped inside. The construct ascended for a few dozen meters, high enough to easily let him see the confines of the entire dungeon with ease. Consequently, there was no monster hidden from him, and the invisible shields hovering near his team could intervene at any moment.

Now then, he summoned the prototype of Jack's shield from his ring. He does like to use it to attack.

Lev's slowed Perception allowed him to track as the Shield moved forward with measured steps, missing the distant snake that Amelia pointed out later. Everything moved as if underwater, slowed to an unnatural degree by his vastly enhanced senses.

Jack utilized his shield to bash away the monster's lunge again, this time not forgetting to set it up for the follow-up. His hammer moved in a wide arc, thudding into the side of the snake's maw that tried to dodge at the last moment.

Not entirely successful, it was disoriented enough for Amelia to behead it. She didn't take any chances and cleaved its head in two after that.

Yep, adding a spiky boss in the middle of the shield sounds worthwhile, Lev deduced, having taken his time to learn a bit about shields. Granted, most of what he was going to create would be copied from the backup shield. The boss would be the only new addition, a small spike with a round base attached to the center of the shield.

That could wait. His team was still far from reaching the level cap, and creating the shield was only going to take a few minutes. He already had the formations planned and modified.

Instead, he created a flat, round disk. Disks were something he was still fond of, both because the idea was one he used from his past life and because they had served him flawlessly in his journey to the first evolution.

Unfortunately, the disks he could form after becoming an Adept weren't nearly as sharp or durable as the Rare version of Stargazer. That comparison only became sadder after remembering the fate of his glaive, torn to shreds in a single exchange.

Now, he had the tools to try again. Like the longsword for Amelia, he first enchanted the current construct with durability. Fortress of Resilience didn't mesh well with sharpness runes, so he used the durability runes from his enhancement formation. Those worked without problem, even if the runes were less potent.

Next, he encased the disk in two thin layers. After ensuring that the gap between the main middle construct and the layers was uniform and as small as he could make it, he enchanted the circular edges of both outer layers with sharpness runes.

Given the dimensions of the disk, he couldn't hope to slot a core in it anywhere. The whole construct was barely an inch thick by the time he was done, and as wide as his arm. It was larger than the ones he was used to, which was intended. The monsters were bigger, too.

Lev couldn't teleport mana inside, since the formations demanded pure mana. So, bringing it out of his pool and letting it seep out through his arm, Lev controlled the flow and easily guided it to the waiting enchantments. The process was one he remembered like the back of his hand, though most of the time, he only needed to carry the mana to Stargazer's converters.

It took less than a second for the formations to be saturated, glowing slightly in the disk. Lev brought it closer and summoned several shields to test the sharpness.

A single mental command was enough for it to spin at extreme speeds, causing him to frown slightly. No doubt, his mind could make the disks spin faster than most enchantments, but the added burden was too much for a single construct. The smallest of mistakes at such a speed would easily mess up the whole rhythm and require him to reset the whole thing.

Can't help it, I guess.

Down below, a group of owls was chasing the trio. Kayla used a single barrier to deflect two of the ones targeting Amelia from the right, and Jack was luring them into dashing into his shield.

The strategy easily worked. Monsters, especially at lower levels, were dumb. They probably couldn't tell a human from another, let alone something like bait. When the first of them fell, Amelia's sword found more leeway to flash, bringing the rest down in mere seconds.

While watching them dive deeper with growing confidence, Lev messed with several different options for the next half an hour. The disk was recreated in several different fashions, and he had quite a few results.

Firstly, putting all the runes on the flat of the disk without any layers was not optimal. Sure, they all worked just fine, but the clashing enchantment effects reduced the potency overall.

After seeing that, he stuck to layers and used yet another formation from his rune collection. The armorbreaker formation was designed for his lances, providing them with a large sharpness boost and making them spin to increase their penetration power. Lev was interested in the latter function, and his brows rose when he realized it was the work of a single rune.

Sustained Movement.

The whole willpower rune's purpose was to 'record' a movement and keep doing it. Since Drakys had already set it to a fixed purpose, Lev's lances always spun accordingly.

Now that he had carved the rune on his disk on both outer layers, he needed to set it to making the disks spin again. The process was simple. While supplying a constant stream of mana into the rune, he made the disks spin, their speed ramping up over a few seconds.

It took a few tries for the rune to properly record the movement. Lev discreetly moved to the edge of the dense foliage and lowered himself to the ground. The disk left the bubble and received an influx of mana, powering its enchantments to full in an instant.

All of them worked together seamlessly as the construct became more durable, the edges became sharper, almost shining blue in his Mana Perception, and the disk itself started spinning. Slowly at first, then faster and faster as the speed became several times higher than what he could manage as a Classer.

When it reached the maximum, Lev gave it the command to fly forward with bated breath. In his slowed Perception, he watched as the trunk of a slim tree was sheared through without any noticeable resistance, cleaved in two.

Barrier threads grabbed the falling tree and lowered it to the ground without alerting the entire forest. Recalling the disk, he threw it in his secondary bubble. He ascended again, satisfied with the initial test. The disk's sharpness was comparable to his old glaive, which was a resounding success now that he thought about it. The idea was worth looking into again, given just how much he could modify the constructs with kinetic energy runes.

All the while, his attention never left his teammates. The boss falcon's aura wasn't anywhere near them still, and the trio wasn't far from its position either. It wouldn't be long until they had to face it.

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